"Milwaukee County First" Besmirches Scott Walker

MCF Tries to Besmirch Scott Walker Using Guilt by Association

Below is a quote from the pseudo non-profit group called Milwaukee County First that I believe deserves some attention.

"It seems Scott Walker feels at home with the Tea Party folks. He was a speaker at the anti-government and non-grassroots rally that happened in Milwaukee today.

This is the same non-grassroots rally that Joe the Contractor Plumber apparently got into a fight at.

Renee Crawford was there, and has an eye-witness account of what how the rally turned violent.

Keep it classy, Scott!"

(Bold emphasis was mine)

Where do I begin. First, Tea Parties are not anti-government protests. They are anti-increased spending and anti-increased taxing protests. Characterizing them as anti-government is like me telling my wife that she's anti-husband for protesting the fact that I took out a loan for a yacht when I probably should have filed for bankruptcy. And trust me, if I did this, I would be locked out of the house. And that's all these tea party protests are about. They want to lock government out of their pocketbooks.

Second and ironically, MCF is not willing to call the tea parties a "grass roots" rally, but is more than willing to call itself a "grass roots network". Let's consider this for a moment. There are millions of people across the nation attending tea parties, and yet they are not considered a "grass roots" swelling? But, Milwaukee County First, who cannot manage to get more than 65 signatures on their three-week old petition is a legitimate "grass roots network"? How funny is that?

Third, a single incident within the confines of a rally of about 8,000 to 15,000 people has nothing to do with Scott Walker regardless of how Milwaukee County First would love to castigate him for it. This is like blaming the Milwaukee County Board for the unintelligible rantings of Chris Liebenthal at a recent Milwaukee County Budget hearing. Liebenthal may have spoke at the meeting, but this doesn't mean that the County Board is somehow to blame for Chris' mumblings. (Sorry Chris, I couldn't resist.)

And fourth, Joe the Plumber didn't get into a fight. Even MCF's eye witness source wasn't sure who was involved. And now, from different eye witness accounts and Youtube video, we find out that Joe the Plumber played a role in breaking up the commotion. For liberal bloggers, there is nothing more important than characterizing tea party protesters as members of a racist, right-wing fringe group. The purpose, of course, is to distract people from the fact that the anti-spending views of tea party protesters actually reflect the views of the mainstream public that opposes Obama's health care agenda.

MCF Uses an Incredulous Source

The above quote from Milwaukee County First shows they are willing to use a "run first and check later" philosophy when utilizing sources, especially when it means taking a swipe at Scott Walker. And this isn't the first time that MCF has done this. There petition drive for saving Milwaukee County programs was predicated upon an alleged cut to the county's EMS funding. This, of course, was based upon "leaked" information that the county might withhold $3 million from the county's paramedic program. Without wasting time, MCF drew up a petition stating that people in Milwaukee County would not receive paramedic services for medical services if the funding were cut. What happened? Well, Scott Walker committed to fund the EMS program, and MCF has yet to remove these scare tactics from their petition.

In the case of the Milwaukee tea party, MCF once again went with an incredulous source without checking their facts. This is the type of impetuous behavior we expect from bloggers, not from a non-profit organization that claims to be made up of people from all walks of life.

I urge everyone to read the source that MCF uses. Crawford's rendition of what happened is so skewed and intentionally false that one only hopes that she retracts her statements. At the Milwaukee tea party, she described a mob of "angry white men" chasing an Obama supporter who was patriotically shouting that he has the Constitutional right to free speech. According to her chronicle, the mob was angrily chanting, "You should die!!!"

According to an anonymous police officer, the protester who was allegedly practicing his Constitutional right to free speech was actually pushing people and damaging property at the event. The officer said the man appeared to be provoking an incident. At one point, the man took a swipe at a woman knocking her camera to the ground. The lacerations to the man's face were not caused by the mob, but by police officers who had to subdue and put the man under arrest. Other eye witnesses confirm the officer's account, which can be found at Wigderson.com. Here is how liberal blogger Renee Crawford describes the incident,

"He had 30 guys surrounbding [sic] him and attacking him and HE just got arrested! Blood around his face

The tussle's over...

This was SCARY, these people on the lakefront today were being told, this is a revolution, being told they were the people's mob? At what point do the speakers at this rally have some responsiblity [sic] for inciting violence? This is an honest question."

Did you happen to notice how the most important information was conveniently omitted? Almost as soon as she posted her comments on Facebook, the liberal left (including MCF) went wild with it. Youtube video does not show the man being attacked by a crowd of people. It shows the man yelling at a crowd while the crowd followed him with their video cameras. The only one arrested at the event was the lonely protester who tried to provoke a fight at a peaceful rally.

We expect Milwaukee County First to post a retraction for relying on an incredulous source and using it to besmirch Scott Walker in the process. The Hispanic Conservative will leave no stone unturned when dealing with special interest groups that pretend to be a legitimate non-profit organization for partisan purposes. And as long as Milwaukee County First provides inaccurate or misleading content on their website, we are more than willing to call them out for it.